AllAfrica.com, Africa
May 19 2004
NCC Executive Board Asks Urgent Intervention in the Sudan
National Council of Churches USA (New York)
PRESS RELEASE
May 19, 2004
Posted to the web May 19, 2004
Chicago, Ill
Urgent intervention to stop the killing in Sudan was the call of the
National Council of Churches USA Executive Board in a resolution
adopted unanimously today during its spring meeting here May 17-18.
The Board committed the NCC and its member churches “to intensifying
their efforts” to stop the apparent attempt at ethnic cleansing in
Darfur, western Sudan, that already has claimed tens of thousands of
lives and displaced a million people, and that risks deepening to
genocide.
It condemned the involvement of all parties perpetrating genocide in
the Sudan and called upon the government of Sudan to bring an end to
this practice immediately, including stopping attacks by its military
and proxy militia against civilians in Darfur.
And it called on the U.S. government “to continue to press the
Sudanese government to bring to a halt this unfolding horror and to
support appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian, conflict resolution and
peace enforcement efforts by the United Nations to these ends.”
Today’s resolution also called upon the international community and
non-governmental organizations to investigate and monitor reports of
crimes against humanity being committed in Sudan.
Among those voicing passionate support for the action was Bishop
Vicken Aykazian of Washington, D.C., Ecumenical Officer of the
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America. It is estimated that 1.5
million Armenians perished between 1915-23 in the Armenian Genocide,
and that a million were deported forcibly.
“My family is victim of the first genocide of the 20th century,”
scattered to the far corners of the earth, said Bishop Aykazian. “I
am very much concerned when I see that people in other nations now
are being massacred as well in Sudan, simply because they are
black. Ten years ago, in Rwanda, in front of the civilized world, one
million people were slaughtered. The same thing is happening now in
Sudan. The NCC must take this very seriously and do something.” On
April 23, the NCC sponsored an observance of the 10th anniversary of
the Rwandan Genocide, held in Los Angeles and featuring Samantha
Power, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her book ”A Problem from
Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide.’
She and other speakers noted that despite the world’s pledge to
‘never again’ allow genocide, the world is not stepping up
effectively to stop the killing in Sudan.
“Knowing the history of genocide in the 20th century, beginning with
the Armenian Genocide through the Jewish Holocaust and ending with
the Rwandan Genocide, we are appalled that this legacy of death and
destruction should be carried into the 21st century,” the Board
stated.
Today’s resolution by the NCC’s Executive Board, whose 80 members are
delegates from the Council’s 36 Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican
member churches, reaffirms and extends the Board’s extensive 2002
resolution on the continuing crisis in the Sudan.
In today’s action, the Board also commended actions already taken by
member communions and recommended that they prayerfully consider
further actions that they might take, individually and together as
the NCC, conducive to the establishment of peace in Sudan.
NCC General Secretary Bob Edgar urged U.S. churches not to let
current preoccupation with Iraq, the elections, the Middle East and
the U.S. economy distract them from action on Sudan. “This is an
urgent moment,” he said.